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Cisco
® Monitor Manager 1.1.2 is a comprehensive management application designed for the needs of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with as many as 250 IP phones. It provides monitoring of key device parameters on Cisco network devices including routers and switches, access points, IP phones, and Cisco Unified Communications applications. Cisco Monitor Manager also provides support for any Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)-capable and IP-addressable devices from other vendors in the network. It monitors the network 24 hours a day, periodically polling and collecting inventory and performance-monitoring data from the managed devices.

Applications

Cisco Monitor Manager can be used by SMBs as a self-managed network monitoring application or by service providers as part of a managed service offering. This gives greater flexibility to SMBs and creates revenue-generating opportunities for managed service providers (MSPs).

Self-Managed Solution

You can manage and monitor your SMB's network using a single copy of Cisco Monitor Manager at your corporate office. The application operates in a standalone mode and remotely discovers, monitors, and proactively manages the entire network, including remote offices. Reports and alerts are generated as required to provide 24-hour visibility into the health of the network. Cisco Monitor Manager also supports launching of Cisco device managers when they are needed to perform advanced configurations.

Cisco Monitor Manager performs automatic discovery of the entire network infrastructure and Cisco Unified Communications system to provide a real-time physical view, service-level details, and the current operational status of each element in the network. See Figure 1.

Managed Service Solution

As a Cisco value-added reseller (VAR) MSP, you can deploy Cisco Monitor Manager at your SMB customers' sites (Figure 2). This model provides you with an economical, 24-hour network management solution for your customers that help them to focus on their core business rather than their network. Operating as an agent for Cisco Monitor Director it collects relevant network information and syslogs from your customer's network and selectively forwards them to your
Cisco Monitor Director server at your network operation center over a highly secure and reliable communication channel. You have full visibility into your SMB customers' networks and can anticipate network issues before their businesses are affected. For more information on Cisco Monitor Director solution please visit
http://www.cisco.com/go/cmd.

Figure 1. Cisco Monitor Manager in a Small-Business Network

Figure 2. Cisco Monitor Manager with Cisco Monitor Director

Key Features and Benefits

Cisco Monitor Manager provides the following key features and benefits:

Cisco Monitor Manager allows you to discover and view the complete topology of your network across all locations and remote offices. It supports seed device, SNMP sweep, ICMP ping, and Cisco Configuration Assistant import-based discovery. It uses Cisco Discovery Protocol and Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) neighbor data to discover the entire underlying data and voice network and then visualizes it in an intuitive graphical display. Its real-time autorefresh display shows network and device-level status, faults, inventory, connectivity, and manageability information for all the managed networking elements in the network. Cisco Monitor Manager periodically rediscovers the topology and generates alerts if it finds new devices in the network. The graphical topology display is a central navigation point to initiate various context-sensitive right-click menus used to obtain detailed status; to obtain real-time as well as historical performance data, reports, and alerts; and to launch device managers for in-depth configuration. See Figure 3.

A single copy of Cisco Monitor Manager deployed at the main office facilitates monitoring of all remote sites as well as the main office.

Figure 3. Cisco Monitor Manager Network Topology

Networkwide Inventory Collection and Reporting

Cisco Monitor Manager periodically collects inventory information, including cards and interface data, from all managed devices in the network and stores it in an embedded database for reporting purposes. The application provides device-inventory reports that show all the managed devices with their operational cards and interfaces. These reports are also periodically sent to the Cisco Monitor Director server when managed by a VAR MSP. Cisco Monitor Manager also collects a detailed inventory of all Cisco voice devices in the network and stores the information in its embedded database for detailed voice-related reports. See Figure 4.

Figure 4. Cisco Monitor Manager Networkwide Inventory Report

Cisco IP Telephony Monitoring

The application remotely polls and collects data continuously as it monitors the different Cisco IP telephony elements such as Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series, Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express, Cisco Unity
® Express, Cisco voice gateways, and Cisco Unified IP Phones. It provides real-time information and raises alerts for connectivity-related and registration-related outages and provides additional contextual information to locate and identify the affected Cisco Unified IP Phones. It uses open interfaces such as SNMP and HTTP/HTTPS to periodically collect data from the Cisco Unified Communications system and the underlying transport infrastructure.

Cisco Monitor Manager provides a rich set of reports that include trunk utilization, voice port utilization, and IP phone reports. The IP phone inventory reports give network managers instant access to status information about every IP phone in the network. Such reports are available for both Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based and Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP)-based IP phones. Cisco Monitor Manager also provides voicemail monitoring that keeps track of mailbox sizes and creates alerts based on configured threshold limits.

SNMP and HTTPS-Based Communication

Cisco Monitor Manager uses SNMP to discover and retrieve configuration and performance information and manage network elements in your network. It also uses the highly secure and reliable HTTPS protocol to manage Cisco security appliances and certain aspects of the application. Cisco Monitor Manager also uses ICMP ping to manage non-SNMP-capable devices. With protocol fallback, Cisco Monitor Manager uses HTTP if a managed Cisco device does not support HTTPS.

In MSP deployments, Cisco Monitor Manager periodically communicates with Cisco Monitor Director over an encrypted Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection. Every instance of Cisco Monitor Manager is authenticated using a unique ID number and license key. For improved security, the SSL port is configurable on both Cisco Monitor Manager and Cisco Monitor Director.

Cisco Device Performance Monitoring

Cisco Monitor Manager provides a GUI for monitoring important device parameters such as CPU, memory, reachability, availability, and public switched telephone network (PSTN) trunk utilization. The application periodically polls devices for these parameters and stores them in its embedded database for real-time graphing, historical analysis, and reporting purposes. The application also allows you to configure thresholds for these parameters to notify operators of a threshold breach. Alerts are generated and dispatched through e-mail or pager messages and optionally sent to a Cisco Monitor Director server. See Figure 5.

Figure 5. Cisco Monitor Manager Device Performance Monitoring

Interface Status and Traffic Monitoring

Cisco Monitor Manager monitors traffic status and important interface parameters such as packet rates, interface status, traffic counters, errors, and interface utilization. The application periodically polls devices for these parameters and stores them in its embedded database. It also allows you to configure thresholds for these monitored parameters to notify operators of a threshold breach. See Figure 6.

Figure 6. Cisco Monitor Manager Interface Monitoring

Real-Time Alerts and Notifications

Cisco Monitor Manager collects syslogs from all managed devices and displays real-time fault-monitoring information to help you anticipate issues before they affect users. It converts emergency, alert, and critical syslogs into alert notifications and notifies network managers through e-mail and pager messages. In addition to displaying user-friendly charts and graphs, Cisco Monitor Manager also compares monitoring data against user-defined thresholds and notifies network managers of a threshold breach. It also raises alerts on Cisco Unified Communications devices based on their service status. Alerts are stored in the embedded database for historical reporting purposes. See Figure 7.

Figure 7. Cisco Monitor Manager Notification and Alerts

Reports

Cisco Monitor Manager provides in-depth reporting capabilities that are easy to interpret, present, and print. Data from the graphical reports can be filtered based on site, device family, or a particular managed device. Cisco Monitor Manager supports the following networkwide, easy-to-use graphical reports. See Figure 8.

The Cisco Monitor Manager GUI helps you perform on-demand backup and restore of startup configuration files for all the managed Cisco devices in your network. Its configuration archive feature also supports backup and restore of the VLAN database for all managed Cisco Catalyst
® switches in the network. With this feature, network managers can also save running configurations to startup configurations before performing a manual backup. See Figure 9.

VAR MSP License: Yearly subscription license in which Cisco Monitor Manager is installed at the customer site, sending monitoring information to the MSP and working together with Cisco Monitor Director at the MSP's location for remote managing and proactive monitoring of the customer's network. For information on Cisco Monitor Director solution, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/cmd.

Upgrade licenses allow you to scale your monitored network from 48 to 250 users or upgrade from a self-managed to an MSP-managed deployment. In a managed deployment, Cisco Monitor Manager operating as an agent for Cisco Monitor Director sends its license type and expiration status to Cisco Monitor Director at the MSP's site. The MSP can create license reports and proactively remind customers of upcoming renewals.

Ordering Information

Cisco Monitor Manager 1.1.2 is offered as a standalone application for SMBs. A 60-day free evaluation copy of Cisco Monitor Manager can be downloaded from
http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/tablebuild.pl/CiscoMM-crypto. License purchases following the trial period are required for continued use of the product. Please refer to the online product bulletins for further ordering details. Cisco Monitor Manager is available through regular Cisco sales and distribution channels worldwide. To place an order, visit the
Cisco Ordering Homepage.

To purchase a perpetual license for use beyond the evaluation period, contact your nearest Cisco channel partner or reseller.

Using the Cisco lifecycle services approach, Cisco and its partners provide a broad portfolio of end-to-end services and support that can help increase your network's business value and return on investment. This approach defines the minimum set of activities needed, by technology and by network complexity, to help you successfully deploy and operate Cisco technologies and optimize their performance throughout the lifecycle of your network.